January 18, 2011

Once again, another awesome day at sea.  Started out feeling pretty queezy in my 8:00 Biology class, due to insane waves in the Atlantic.  But soon to be followed by an incredible presentation from this guy who does not-for-profit work in Nepal.  This professor on board started his non-profit quite a few years back, and it is devoted to saving young girls lives from being exploited by men from around the area.  It was so moving to see what the work of one man can do to a small town.  For years, young girls in this village continued to disappear from school, and no one would speak of what happened to them.  With time, this professor came to find out that a group of people would kidnap these girls, and there first day gone from there families, they would be raped at a minimum of 10-15 times a day.  The life expectancy of these 12-13 year old girls would be at most 3 years.  Could you imagine if that happened in our home towns? Every week, a new girl gets kidnapped.  It is so sad and this presentation was way too entirely moving for my comfort. It was sad to see what went on in Nepal, but incredible to see what this one man did for these young girls.  He currently has saved over 75 young school girls and has built a safe school for them to attend to get away from the crime and hate that they have endured all of there lives. 

It seems that every day aboard this ship, I feel more and more educated beyond any education I could receive any where else in the world.  We are currently traveling at 24.5 knots and we're are headed for the Amazon River entrance.  Looking at my live streaming map on the TV in the room, it looks like we are going to be on the Amazon in just a couple hours.  Once on the Amazon, we'll be traveling over 700 miles to a little town called Manaus.  I cannot wait to get there, and it's just a matter of time until I'll be living with the locals in a remote village 100 miles away from Manaus.  Along with 6 other students and this professor I previously spoke of, we will be living and barracks and helping this village repaint there school and aid in construction of there community center.  It's going to be eye-opening, and I'm counting down the days!

For everyone at home, thanks a lot for all of the emails, and to anyone who doesn't have that email adress, its embouchard@semesteratsea.net    Once again, I miss everyone and hit me up when you get a chance!  Peace world.